Butcher Boy- Jimmy MacBeath (Ban) 1952 Henderson
[From Edinburgh; School of Scottish Studies; SA1952.29.B7 (B12)
Listen:
http://www.tobarandualchais.co.uk/en/play/21772;jsessionid=62DA2A2EE307FD74C55CE6C5FA57021B
http://www.tobarandualchais.co.uk/fullrecord/21772/1
Biography - See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_MacBeath (accessed 23 March 2011)
R. Matteson 2016]
Summary - The singer is apprenticed to a butcher. He falls in love with a girl and promises marriage. He goes to her house and asks her to go for a walk. He stabs her, takes her by the hand and drags her to the waterside and throws her in. He goes back to his mother's house. He asks for a candle to light him to bed and a handkerchief for his head, but he can get no rest for visions of the flames of hell.
The Butcher Boy - sung by Jimmy MacBeath (1894- 1972) of Portsoy, Banffshire. Recorded by Hamish Henderson in 1952
1. My parents gave me good learning,
Good learning gave to me
For they sent me to a butcher's shop,
For a butcher boy to be.
2 Soon I fell in love with a pretty fair maid,
With a dark and a-rolling eye;
And I promised she would marry me
For it's with her I would lie.
3 I went down to her mother's house,
'Tween the hours of nine and ten,
And I ask-ed her to a walk with me
Down by yon river side.
4. They walk-ed east and they walk-ed west,
And they walk-ed all along,
Till he drew a knife into her breast,
And he stabbed her to the ground.
5. She fell upon her bending knee,
"Have a-mercy," she did cry;
"O Willie dear, don't murder me,
But leave me here to die."
6. He took her by the lily-white hand,
And he dragged her all along,
Till he dragged to the water's brim,
And put her body in.
7. Returning home to his father's house,
Between the hours of twelve and one,
And little did his father think,
What his[1] only son had done.
8. He asked him for a candle,
To let him see to bed.
He asked him for a handkerchief,
To tie around his head.
9. No sleep, no rest could this young man get,
No sleep, no rest could he find,
For he thought he saw the flames of hell,
Approaching in his mind.
1. original "her"